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Three Poems Steve Barbaro

Sorta I.                   I like                lakes; I like                    not quite                  evading modern                      places: I like the armature of the moment E-shaped     crowds spread in a lamplight        filled bubble across a vast            lawn high-pitchedly. II.   The face of the sum of each                  day really          is covered with bulbs    blasting the tallest,                         roundest                     light towards flatnesses & I          watch, waste, go             away, carry                   clear               bags holding               liquids when they’re most                      inert, fondleable. III. I like ponds; I like shrillful         strayings circling     modern places: I like, like      the plenitude of the days        U-shaped crowds curl              like faintly   shriveled bubbles over       the corners,   the casings of steep                lawns. Limbs                       rhyme. For a Friend I.                                                             into will: was it dumb                                                                  motion                                                                    shrilled as                                                                such or simply                                                          will alone                                                                 stripping                                                                       itself                                                                 down to                                                                     a crude                                                                          but more                                                                      pure                                                                             force— II. —silence congeals but conceal, here, the clatterings— III.                                                 will’s                             source: was it a crude                                         but more                                    pure                                            force                                           culled there-                                                  from or simply                                                              dumb                                                           motion shrilled                                                              yet sub-                                                                   sumed— The Lighthouse Verdict Curtailed distance as a vague harangue. Binoculars: coverings, inducements. Shuttlings. Distance, pronounced: a discreetly hissing wound? The toy gyroscope is not rattling at the staircase’s Bottom, nor does the shrill rattle down the steep staircase Reflect anything but passing foolery, a mind at low play Pushing up but mostly just against its own boundaries. Binoculars: self-extension purely realized; or, best Eyes.    A set.       One.          One set. Most of the instruments dusty & dark in the cabinets … And the cabinets kept, per design, at ten-foot Intervals throughout the lamp-cluttered, musty Upper room. Twin rattles down the staircase: someone’s Home? The loose breath of the straying mind: glass is fogged. A crowd pushes like something’s limb across the sand. The staircase, say it, staircase—one pair of arms? Of legs? There’s a system well imposed & upon—see it—the face. These poems are from Neptune’s Hyperopia, Steve Barbaro’s first manuscript. Other selections have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Washington Square, Lo-Ball Magazine, and DIAGRAM. □